


Star of the Sea

by AdelaCathcart



Series: Violators [2]
Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Adultery, Angst and Romance, Blasphemy, Church Sex, F/M, Pre-Canon, all the other sins, assholes in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:20:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22370110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdelaCathcart/pseuds/AdelaCathcart
Summary: At the chancel-rail kneels the object of Asriel’s search. She gives every indication of being absorbed in devout prayer. Her hands are clasped tightly palm to palm, and she shakes her head slowly like she’s being told something she doesn’t want to hear. The monkey crouches solemnly by her ankle on the kneeler, his golden fur glowing like flame in the candlelight. The illusion of piety is so complete that Asriel has to remind himself this is the same woman who last night stifled wanton moans on his shoulder so her husband wouldn’t hear. The memory of her nipples burns his palms like stigmata. This assignation was her idea. And even if she were truly praying with all her unfathomable heart, heaven holds no loving god to listen.Love is here, on earth.
Relationships: Lord Asriel/Marisa Coulter
Series: Violators [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1610350
Comments: 6
Kudos: 58





	Star of the Sea

**Author's Note:**

> “Looking up at the altar I thought with triumph, almost as though he were a living rival, You see—these are the arguments that win, and gently moved my fingers across her breast.”  
> ― Graham Greene, _The End of the Affair_

At midnight the cathedral is nearly deserted, and Asriel drifts in from the fog with a handful of stragglers just as the matins service is beginning. In the vestibule he runs his hands through his hair, sighing, and Stelmaria gives a shudder to shake the light rain off her coat.

The snow leopard quietly asks, “Do you think she’s here?”

He feels her apprehension but doesn’t share it, and he looks down at her blankly. “Why wouldn’t she be?”

“I can think of a reason.” Asriel doesn’t answer. “Is she in the pews, do you think?”

“Not if she wanted to be private.”

“We don't know that she does.”

As she says this Asriel is already striding purposefully towards the ambulatory, and the high priest leads the congregation in a dreary “Pater Noster.” Stelmaria skulks at his heels, sniffing the air for the little monkey’s trail.

They pause in the southern transept, at the Lady chapel devoted to the Star of the Sea. Between two banks of votive candles rises a massive column, yellow marble skillfully carved in the Neoclassical style, in the form of a graceful ocean wave. Serenely surmounting its crest, her skirts and veils mingled with the swirling foam, sweet-faced Mary opens her supple arms, and her ibis dæmon, Hebel, spreads his broad wings graciously at her feet.

At the chancel-rail kneels the object of Asriel’s search. She gives every indication of being absorbed in devout prayer. Her hands are clasped tightly palm to palm, and she shakes her head slowly like she’s being told something she doesn’t want to hear. The monkey crouches solemnly by her ankle on the kneeler, his golden fur glowing like flame in the candlelight. The illusion of piety is so complete that Asriel has to remind himself this is the same woman who last night stifled wanton moans on his shoulder so her husband wouldn’t hear. The memory of her nipples burns his palms like stigmata. This assignation was her idea. And even if she were truly praying with all her unfathomable heart, heaven holds no loving god to listen.

Love is here, on earth.

He approaches the altar and lights a candle, dropping a coin noisily into the donation box to get her attention. She blinks at him, dazed, and for a moment her expression is dreamy and guileless, her voice froggy from disuse. “What did you pray for?”

“The souls of men lost at sea, of course. And yourself?”

She takes a deep breath, staring directly into the candles, unblinking. If her eyes burn she gives no sign. At last she exhales, then turns back to him, lashes aflutter, her usual poise in place.

“Why, for souls at sea as well.” Her smile is too charming to be real.

“My dæmon is named for her, you know,” he remarks with a nod towards the saint. The snow leopard lifts her proud head under his hand. “Stelmaria.”

Marisa nods politely. The monkey slips through the rail and approaches them, respectfully stroking the beautiful silver coat, and Stelmaria crouches so that he can reach her better, rubbing him with her soft cheek.

“And what do you call him?” Asriel prompts, unsure why he has to ask.

“What do I call him?” She gives him a look that’s cool and thoughtful, as if she can’t imagine why he’d want to know. Then she smiles, which feels crueler. “Perhaps one day he’ll tell you himself.”

The baleful little face at his feet is watching him warily, though the monkey’s fingers are running through Stelmaria’s fur, and the traitorous leopard is purring. He’s the size of a baby, with a long agile tail, and striking red-gold fur that sticks out in long tufts around his head like a mane. Where the skin shows, on his fingers and face, it’s papery and tar-black like a mummy’s. The crushed nose is a mummy’s too, in fact his entire face is the image of an antediluvian man in miniature, except for the big almond-shaped eyes. He hugs Stelmaria’s neck with lanky arms, glaring at her man defiantly, and Asriel says nothing because behind the hostility looms something profoundly lonely, daring him to be its companion, and the call of that abyss takes him aback, and the danger thrills him.

Marisa snaps her fingers and the monkey leaps back through the railing, and takes his accustomed place on her shoulder. He says something in her ear and she strokes him placatingly while she gathers up her bag and coat—not fox fur this time, just a slate blue mackintosh—and approaches her lover at the chancel. Right now, in his presence, she’s alight with passion, and Asriel can’t help but admire the deadly apparatus in which he finds himself ensnared. He’s coming to know her luminous beauty is an anglerfish’s lure, and her ravenous mind the gruesome maw beyond. A mortal wound from her would be deft and nearly painless, and he suspects this skill is put to no use more often than her own sadistic amusement. It never occurs to him to be cautious. He’s rarely met a match for his intellect or his will, and never in the form of a woman, yet here she is, claiming him effortlessly, so subtly he didn’t know until it was done. But the heart is a terribly burdensome thing, he thinks. It’s a relief to give it away.

In the silence of his reflections, voices from the choir swell in haunting prayer.

> _Behold, the Bridegroom cometh in the middle of the night_   
>  _And blessed is that servant whom He shall find watching_   
>  _And unworthy is he whom He shall find heedless_

“Have you seen the reliquary?”

This question takes him by surprise. “The what?”

> _Beware, therefore, O my soul_   
>  _Lest thou be overcome with sleep_   
>  _Lest thou be given up to death_

“The treasures of the church, of course. They have an impressive collection here. This way.”

> _And be shut out from the Kingdom_

She gives him a deliciously crafty look before exiting the transept and walking halfway down the side aisle. Asriel follows at a little distance, acting casual, but the scanty midnight parishioners are absorbed in their service and if they notice the tryst in progress they don’t care. Marisa has ducked into an alcove, and he pretends to admire a mosaic for a moment before he goes in after.

The room off the nave is small and ornate, like being inside a jewel box. The walls are lined with fenced-off shelves and glass cases, holding dozens of crystal and precious metal caskets, each intricately decorated and labeled with a portrait of the saint from whose body the treasure was procured: a desiccated finger, a bone fragment, a tooth. It’s dimly-lit by anbaric track lights inside the display cases, and the vaulted ceiling is painted to resemble the night sky, deep blue and spangled with gold-foil sunbursts.

She’s waiting for him with her back to the wall by the door, and satisfied that this is privacy enough he takes her in his arms and kisses her, and the ember he’d hardly felt as it smoldered painfully in his chest is at last aired and stirred to flame. She clasps him to her tightly, their mouths are urgent and artless, and it ultimately becomes a contest of whose lungs will give out first, which he concedes, of course, having less patience for games. While he licks his lips and catches his breath, she takes his face in her hands.

“I was so afraid you wouldn’t come,” she whispers, kissing his cheeks, his chin, his forehead. “At first I thought you’d tricked me, and I prayed that you would have an accident, and with your last thought you would wish that you’d been truthful—and then I was terrified that my prayer would come true, so I prayed: let him never come, then, let him never even think of me, so long as he is in this world and so am I, even if we never see each other, I wouldn’t care, and that could be enough—and I thought, I could stay here forever—I could wait for you forever, while the church fell down around me… Ah!”

With one broad hand he holds her head against his face, rubbing his nose and lips against the soft hair at her temple. The other hand unbuttons the jacket of her worsted suit, spreading it open to caress her over the sea-green silk she wears beneath. She grabs him by the hair and pulls his face down to her chest. He kisses the tops of her breasts, then lifts one out of her chemise, sucking it roughly while she writhes in his hands. He lets her feel the scrape of his teeth against her nipple, soothes it with his tongue, does it again. With a low moan she reaches to the iron grating behind her for traction, and the metal clangs loudly, and the four beings in the reliquary room freeze as one.

Slipping out of his grasp, Marisa pulls up her clothes and, beckoning him with a brief but urgent gaze, steps into a small arched hallway which he discovers runs parallel to the nave. The monkey is already descending the narrow stone steps just beyond, either because his eyesight’s better or because they come here often, Asriel decides he doesn’t care which.

The stairs end in an ancient chapel, lit in the day by prismatic glass deadlights embedded in the churchyard overhead, but at this hour the only illumination is a life-sized crucifix glowing intense fluorescent red, throwing the world into stark two-color relief. In the center of the floor is a basalt sarcophagus, its lid ornamented with the lifelike figure of its inmate, a bishop, in placid eternal repose. The room smells of cold stone and old frankincense. Asriel lifts Marisa by the waist and sets her on the tomb, kissing her deeply, one arm wrapped around her while the other hand grasps her leg above the knee, groping up past her stocking, under the strap of her garter, squeezing the flesh of her thigh. At last his fingers reach inside her silk culotte slip, and she’s so hot and slick against his hand a shudder of desire shoots through him like a spear to the base of his groin. She moans a little, trying to find a comfortable position next to the stone saint.

“I have a house, you know, in Chelsea,” he says as he fingers her. “We could have done this on a featherbed.”

“Too risky—to come there—”

“I could have sent a car. No one would see you.”

“Servants talk—a word—the wrong ear—Edward’s standing with the King, the Magisterium—”

“Then leave him.”

“For what? The chance to sleep with you?” She snorts.

Asriel chuckles, stroking her lazily. “For a start.”

“And then do what? Go home to my mother?” She’s a little breathless, but she raises her head to look him dead in the eye. “I would rather die.”

“Then come and live with me.”

“Nonsense.”

“You could have your own apartments, if you like. Devote yourself to your own research, and not to advancing a dull man's plodding political career. You’re not some vapid socialite. You’re brilliant, don’t let it go to waste.” As he says this he sweeps his thumb from side to side across her vulva, light but insistent. The middle fingers of his right hand are deep inside her.

A sneer. “And be your mistress.”

“Be my wife, then. Share my quarters, bear my children. Work with me. Live and die with me.”

“We couldn’t,” she groans, but it’s perfunctory. His hand is drenched with her, even to the cuff of his shirt. She’s a clever woman, but her body won’t deceive him. He fucks her harder, hard enough to hurt.

“We can do anything we want,” he tells her matter-of-factly.

She moans. “What makes you think—I want to—?”

He withdraws his hand and holds it in front of her face. It’s so wet and red in the crucifix light it looks like it’s been flayed.

“Tell me you don’t, Marisa.”

Unexpectedly, she laughs. It’s a youthful, musical sound, and strange in this deathlike place. She grabs him by the wrist and sucks his fingers clean, licking his palm, making him touch her soft palate, which feels so uniquely intimate that he starts laughing along with her. He feels invincible, immortal. His hands have been inside the Queen of Heaven.

“You can’t,” he affirms fiercely as he unfastens his trousers. “You want this as much as I do.”

She’s already slipping out of her undergarments as she looks into his eyes. “More than I’ve ever wanted anything.”

A moment later he’s inside her.

They fuck against the wall and it’s the holiest thing he’s ever done in a church. When she comes she’s lying face-first in the arms of the dead bishop, and Asriel is holding her by the hair with his elbow on the old man’s neck. He yanks sharply to halt her ecstatic scream, and the near-instantaneous reflexive clench it triggers in her body sends him plunging after. He comes in her before he can think to do otherwise, and he sees the deadlights in the ceiling, then the stars in the vaulted reliquary, and then the stars in the night sky above, and the stars burning massively in immeasurable space, and then drifts like ash back to earth.

“Ugh, you utter bastard,” she grunts, half pleasure and half irritation, touching the sticky mess smeared on her thighs.

“You’re magnificent,” he replies with a laugh.

Her expression is scornful, the same cold ocean water look she gave him before in the coat closet, and then it turns suspiciously serene. “Well, don’t let it worry you too much, darling,” she says brightly, buttoning her jacket. “As long as I remember to sleep with Edward tomorrow, even if the worst should happen the dates will come out all right.”

She doesn’t mean it, but that makes little difference. He takes her hands. Stelmaria holds the monkey down and licks him like a mother. “Marisa, I meant what I said. You have a place to go.”

Her pale skin is red, her fair hair is red, even her suit is grayish-red, but her open mouth and her eyes are black and profoundly sad. With the heel of her hand she rubs them, leaving smeared tears, and says ruefully, “ _Omne animal post coitum triste_...” Then she clears her throat. “Anyway, I don’t think I’ll need it.” She kisses him once more, slow and sensuous. She tastes like saltwater. “Goodnight, Asriel.”

Stelmaria has the monkey pinned to the floor, but he squirms easily out of her grasp as Marisa starts up the stairs. Without looking she takes his hand and swings him up to hug him to her chest. The small black face peeps over her shoulder to look behind them as they ascend.

“I’ll be in Oxford for the next six weeks—“ Asriel remembers suddenly.

He hears a sigh, but no response, from the disembodied voice on the dark stair.

**Author's Note:**

> The epigram Marisa recites is from the ancient Greek surgeon/philosopher Galen: "Every animal is sad after coitus..." It continues, as she well knows, "except the human female and the rooster."
> 
> Her suit: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/156775


End file.
